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Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Sweets of the Season by Shanna Hatfield

Confession is good for the soul, right?
So here goes... I not only love to bake, but I also indulge in a little "quality assurance" of said baked goods during the holiday season.
Most of the goodies I bake get packed into tins and given away as gifts or taken to parties and celebrations.
To me, holiday baking is a way of connecting with my past (while admittedly creating some yummy treats). My grandmother always made the best pies in the world, or at least my world, and her fudge... oh, my goodness, was it good. When I married Captain Cavedweller, she gave me a hand-written recipe card with the fudge recipe along with the antique dish she always served fudge on during the holidays.
Mom was also a great baker and maker of candies. Peanut brittle was one of her specialties along with the divinity my dad begged for every year.
Baking and holidays just always went hand-in-hand in my family. The gift of an easy-bake oven when I was six stirred my interest in baking and created a life-long love for making sweet treats to share.
Here are a few of my holiday favorites:

I started working on the perfect, soft sugar cookie recipe when I was in high school. I don't know that I ever found perfection, but this one comes close if you like a soft cookie that isn't too sweet, yet has an old-fashioned flavor to it.

I used to go to all the work of making gingerbread cut-out cookies, then some fabulous person brought gingerbread bars to a cookie exchange party and my life changed for the better. These are so good and so easy to make!

My beloved auntie shared her recipe for this delicious pumpkin roll with me right after I first got married. The recipe card bears the stains and splatters of twenty-years of abuse, but it just wouldn't be the holiday season if I didn't make at least one Pumpkin Roll.

We won't even talk about calorie count with these rich balls of cake and frosting, but they are so good. Especially fun for kids since they are on a stick.

May whatever you cook up for the holiday season be full of sweet romance!

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The Sweet Romance Reads authors will be hosting the
Santa’s Sweet Romance Reads Bash on December 17th from Noon to 8 PM
(Eastern Time). Join
this event now! There will be oodles of Christmas fun, games, and prizes.

~~~

Please sign up for our mailing list. We plan to send out a
newsletter featuring some wonderful romance flash fiction. Put your
email address in the box under "Mailing List" located in the left hand
column, then click subscribe. Thanks!

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Reminder! Now through Dec. 24, I’ll donate 10 percent of the net proceeds from all book sales to the Justin Cowboy Crisis Fund.
The JCCF is a non-profit organization that assists rodeo athletes
who’ve sustained catastrophic injuries and are unable to work for an
extended period.

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A hopeless romantic with a bit of sarcasm thrown in for good measure, Shanna
Hatfield is a bestselling author of sweet romantic fiction written with a
healthy dose of humor. In addition to blogging and eating too much chocolate,
she is completely smitten with her husband, lovingly known as Captain
Cavedweller.
Shanna creates character-driven romances with realistic heroes and heroines.
Her historical westerns have been described as “reminiscent of the era captured
by Bonanza and The Virginian” while her contemporary works have been called
“laugh-out-loud funny, and a little heart-pumping sexy without being explicit
in any way.”
She is a member of Western Writers of America, Women Writing the West, and
Romance Writers of America.Find Shanna’s books at:Amazon
| Amazon
UK | Barnes &
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Hi Shanna - I'm a new member - just joined the Goodreads group and then found my way over here.

Wow - those look delicious. I'm a huge coconut fan too. And as someone who is hopeless at baking, I'm just in awe of anyone who can make cookies & cakes at home. :-) I'm Chinese and there is not much baking in Chinese cuisine - in fact, all traditional Chinese breads and cakes are steamed! ;-)

Hsin-Yi(H.Y. Hanna)ps. I was wondering if it would be possible to join in the Facebook party as an author? Would I need to be accepted as a Sweet Romance Reads author first? How could I join the team? Thank you! :-)